A 100-year review of Florida citrus production—what is causing this steep decline?

Hi, friends. Welcome back to our AEA webinar series. This month we're back again with Tom Dykstra, who I believe many of you may have heard or had the opportunity to hear last month, where he spoke about how insects are attracted to plants at different stages of plant health and how we have different groups of insects at different degrees of plant health and how we can manage some of that. So this month we're back with a specific look rather than a high level general look. We're back with a specific look at specific citrus specifically. And the geography that we're focusing on is Florida. But obviously the same principles apply regardless of what geography you're in. So, Tom, you thrilled us last time. I'm sure you're going to thrill us again, and I'm going to turn it over to you for the fun.

Alrighty. The title of my talk this week, it's a long one. So it is going to be a century of Florida citrus production. Understanding insect pressure in oranges. We chose century. It's got a nice, nice ring to it. But technically this is going to be a 110 years. So it'll be a century plus a decade. But a century because it has a nice ring to it. We decided to stick with that in order to keep it generally. So this is a little bit of a continuation based upon the last presentation that I gave last month in regards to insects and bricks that John briefly mentioned in the intro. And so we are going to be zeroing in specifically on citrus. And I think it's now about time to begin. I do want to say briefly, real quick, as John said, and I want to say it for emphasis, is that I will be taking a look at oranges specifically as far as citrus, and then I will be looking at the Florida orange industry specifically, while not really talking about California, Texas, in Arizona citrus industry. So the first slide is the slide that I kind of started out with the last presentation. I want to make sure that we are all on the same page in regards to that, because for some of you, especially if you have not heard the last presentation, are going to be taken aback with this statement, but insects only feed upon food that is considered unfit, nutritionally poor, dead or dying. And there are no exceptions to this. I was under the impression that there probably would be exceptions. I have not found any exceptions over the past two decades. And so this is something that I spent a lot of time talking about during the last presentation. The only possible exception are the nectar feeders, because there are a lot of insects that like to eat nectar. As a matter of fact, most of them do. And they do prefer, you know, a good, healthy plant. But. But if you're eating a plant, it is going to be unfit nutritionally poor, dead or dying. And that is the preference for all insects when they are attacking plants. So this is the end of the presentation, as last month shows. If you remember this leaf brix chart, I spent a lot of time going over it. I just wanted to bring this up again in order to jog your memories so that you were aware and. And possibly recall what I was referring to. And that is that once you get above 12, preferably 14 brix, you have no insects and no disease. But everything below that is kind of open. And there are specific insects will attack at specific levels. And this is something that I'm hopeful that everyone kind of knows already because a lot of farmers are well aware. I think that if you take a given crop, and this given crop can be anything, but it doesn't matter what it is. It can be citrus, it might be corn, but you can easily come up with 15 to 20 different pest species that are attacking that particular crop. But you will never have those 15 to 20 insects attacking that crop on the same plant at the same time. Every farmer knows this instinctively who has been out in the field and taken a look. And you see that you can have one, sometimes two, and occasionally three insects will be attacking your plant at the same time. But you never have all of them. And this is because they are picky, they're selective, they choose to move into a plant at a certain level, certainly when certain secondary plant metabolites might be there or might not be there. But also the brix levels that I discussed before and I separated them into four groups. We have the grasshopper group, which is the group that is really able to eat the healthiest plants by far. And grasshoppers do attack citrus. I have seen them myself. You can get acridids, which are the shorthorn grasshopper, as well as the tetaguniids, which are the longhorn grasshoppers or katy tids, and they will take a bite out of your plant, but they are only going to go after a healthy plant as you move down the scale. You now have other chewing insects besides the grasshoppers. And they are going to lose interest in a plant once it reaches 9, 10 or 11 brix. And for the chewing insects, I'm separating them from the grasshopper group because these are going to be the caterpillars, the grubs, the leaf beetles, root Worms, cut worms, things of that sort. As you move on down, as the plant becomes unhealthier, sucking insects will move in. They will lose interest in a plant by the time it reaches 7, 8 or 9 brix. And the sucking insects include the leaf hoppers, plant hoppers, frog hoppers, psyllids, stink bugs, thrips, things along those lines. And then finally we get to the sucking insects, which I consider to be the lowest grade of sucking insects. This is the aphid group. It includes the aphids, but it's not just the aphids.

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It includes aphids, it includes scales, it includes mealybugs, includes the phylloxerins, which are related. And so this group is going to be found at the lowest level. So this was the general terms that I talked about during the last presentation. I'm now going to move into the specifics of citrus. And I will then conclude with this slide again to hit things home. So we're beginning with Florida Citrus. Florida Citrus. I've got. This is a graph right now. It starts from 1910. It goes until 1940. And during this, this time period, we are taking a look at the. The number of boxes produced in the citrus industry. Now, even though it begins at 1910, please don't think that the citrus industry started in 1910. It was going well into the 1800s. But we started keeping track of things at about 1910. And so because of that, we've now got these, these beautiful. Not these graphs, but we've got the figures from the usda who has been keeping track of all of this stuff for a long time. And I'm able to graph this in order to make the points that I wish to make with you. So to the left we've got figures of 5,000, 10,000 and up. And this is actually times 1,000 boxes. So 5,000 times 1,000, that's actually 5. So there are actually 5 million boxes of oranges that are produced. And so as we move up, we've got 10 million, 15 million and so on, so forth. And you can see the number of oranges that are produced. There's quite a. Quite a large amount of them. So during this time period, you can see some fluctuations. Generally speaking, the fluctuations are not that severe. But as everybody can see, we're increasing. And this is because the number of acres were increasing in Florida. And therefore orange production was starting to increase during that time period. And so the citrus industry was going quite nicely between 1910 and 1940. At this time period, during this 30 year period. And certainly before in the 1800s, we were dealing with about 40 to 60 citrus trees per acre. Now, this may sound a little on the low side. For those of you who deal with corn, you understand that you may be dealing with 20, 30,000 plants in an acre. This is on a completely different scale. The reason why is because the citrus tree is so big. So because the citrus tree is so big, you, you can't really fit much more than 40 or 60 at most citrus trees. And that's how the industry began during that time. So I wanted you to be aware of one, how low things were, but also to give you an idea of the immense size that the citrus trees can actually attain during their 50 to 70 year lifetime. But as it happens, we do have some issues. And so occasionally we do have freezes. And when they hit Florida, they are quite damaging to the citrus industry. So we have a cold freeze, 1917 and 1918. And the reason why the two years are mentioned is because the citrus crop always extends from the end of one year and continues on to the beginning of the next. So that's why I have two years listed. So the 1917 and 1918 season, we freeze. And during this freeze, you can see that the citrus, the number of boxes dropped. So we had broken 5 million. We had broken 5 million during these years, but we now dropped. This always happens during a freeze. Citrus does not like cold weather. And so when a freeze does come in, you will have a kill off. And this kill off is going to be manifest in a rather large drop in the number of boxes that are produced. And this is to be expected. Okay. What is maybe not well known is that the citrus tree, after it runs through this freeze and loses its oranges, does not die for the most part. They live and they have a rebound. And this rebound is easily manifest. If you check out, we've got three years of rapid growth after this freeze. Now, why is this? This is in part because the tree had a chance to rest. So it wasn't producing its fruit because of the freeze came in, it took out the fruit, which is a sad thing. I get it, and I understand it hurts farmers. But a healthy citrus tree will rebound. And in this particular case here, the following year it increased drastically, and that it did so for the next three years. This recovery is actually common for a tree crop. So it can be, it can be applicable to the other trees as well, whether they be apples or avocados or anything like that. But a tree gets a little bit of a rest and then Boom. You get a lot of growth immediately afterwards during that freeze. So freeze is bad, but in the long run can actually benefit you. So we had another freeze. Another freeze comes into the picture, unfortunately, this one during the 1934-1935 season. And this freeze obviously also caused a decrease in the number of boxes. We can see a small decrease right there. The recovery is not as rapid this time, but you can see once again, we've got 1, 2, 2, 3. We have three years of rapid growth among the citrus industry because possibly because they had a chance to rest. And so therefore the rebound is excellent. This is what's normally happening when a healthy tree undergoes a freeze in Florida. So I understand the media talks about these freezes and obviously they're bad in many senses of the word. But because it's a fact of life, we have to deal with them. And I just wanted everyone to be aware that they're not as catastrophic as they seem. We also had another one 1939 to 1940. So you can see I talked about the drop here. There was a slight drop here. We've got another drop. And I want everyone to understand that freezes, yes, will absolutely, positively hurt a farmer during the year that the freeze actually happens. So that was in 1940, specifically when that happened. And then we now need to move on to the next few decades. So in these decades, I'm now covering 40 years rather than 30 years. This is going from 1940 to 1980. And we can see that starting right here, we have not yet reached 50 million boxes, but we're getting close to that point. So the citrus industry is absolutely starting to grow during this time. But some changes are occurring. And these changes may or may not compromise the health of the citrus tree. So what are some of these changes that are occurring during this 40 year period? First, pesticide use begins on a massive scale. And I want to emphasize massive scale because before this, in the 1800s, were they using pesticides? Of course they were. Were they doing it between 1910 and 1940? Of course they were. But it wasn't really on a massive scale like it was once about 1940 hit, which is usually around that, that World War II time when pesticides really took off. The pesticide use, because it began on a massive scale, is going to start reducing the health of the citrus trees. Why is this? Because of the life in the soil. So we have herbicides, fungicides and insecticides. I don't have the nematicides up here, but they're more common in Florida than they are in some other states, but they would also be included in this group. But we know that herbicides kill. This actually comes in the word C, I, D, E. It means to kill. So herbicides kill weeds. That's the target organism. But a side effect of the herbicides is that they kill microbes in the soil. Fungicides, of course, kill fungi. That's the target organism. But the side effect is that fungicides also kill microbes in the soil. And insecticides, of course, as you can all figure out, the target organism are the insects. But the side effect is that they kill microbes in the soil. And this is not just about killing microbes in the soil. It's about killing different groups of microbes in the soil. The microbes are the ones that are feeding your plant. They are associated with the roots. They are doing a fantastic job of breaking down minerals, putting them in a form that the roots can pick them up. And without those microbes, the plant will suffer. So by spraying everything, herbicides, fungicides, and insecticides in a particular field, you are doing a very good job of taking out a full gamut of the microbes that are in the soil, at least three different groups of them. But it goes much further than that, the insecticides. Being an entomologist, we can go even further and say it's not just insecticides. We can't group them together into one group because we have the chlorinated hydrocarbons that came out. Then we had the organophosphates, then we had the carbamates, then we had the pyrethroid, sometimes called the synthetic pyrethroids, based upon pyrethrum. And now we've got the relatively new neonics called the neonicotinoids. So these five insecticides are also doing their job at killing microbes. But not just any microbes, different microbes. The chlorinated hydrocarbons are not going to be killing the same microbes as the carbamates. Neither will the pyrethroids be killing the same microbes as the neonics. And so you can see that things are now going in the wrong direction as far as the microbes are concerned. The trees are suffering, objectively speaking, but we're not really noticing it yet because at this point, we're noticing a nice increase. So I'm letting you know that the citrus industry is now being compromised, even though it's not becoming totally manifest. How do I know that? Well, I judge it by the insects. The insects are indicators. All insects are indicators. So because all insects are indicators, I look to see what is attacking a plant and then get an idea as to how healthy the plant may actually be. So in this particular case, back in the 1940s and in the 50s, we had the introduction of our first major pest. Certainly it was present before, it's not like it just arrived, but it's. The numbers of the giant swallowtail, Papilio crispantes, increased drastically. It is sometimes known as the orange dog and sometimes I call it the orange dog caterpillar. It doesn't look orange. I understand that. It actually is rather ugly as far as caterpillars go. It's designed to be that way. It's designed to look like bird poop so that birds do not actually eat it because they don't eat their own poop. And it does have an osmotarium, which is at the front of it right now, which it will release a rather noxious chemical to protect itself. But other than that, it's actually quite susceptible. And they have a tendency to eat citrus in large numbers, or at least they used to. So the orange dog was prevalent during the 1940s when pesticide use began, which is a sign that the citrus industry was starting to suffer. Another thing happened in 1957. High density planting began and the jump from 40 to 60 trees up to 82 was initiated. Now, I need you to understand, for those of you who are citrus farmers, you will know how tight things can get when you're trying to put 82 trees in an acre. So 40 to 60 gave you just enough room in order to collect the oranges. Now you're at 82. And this is now known as, not surprisingly, high density planting. When high density planting begins, this also causes stress upon the citrus tree. Why does that occur? Well, we know trees, generally speaking, this is just a general principle. Generally speaking, trees have their root system under the ground and it usually extends out to about the distance of the leaf canopy. And this is a general rule of thumb. So if you're wondering, you know, how far the roots come out from a tree, you can use as a rough guide the leaf, the leaf canopy. So the roots will extend to about the distance of the leaf canopy where these arrows are shown so that you're going to have roots which can roughly be found directly underneath the tree and extending down a pretty good distance. I'm not talking about the tap root, which can go down to 50 to 100ft or more. I'm talking about the most of the roots, which can easily get down to 10, 20 to 30ft. If it's a Major tree. This is not the case in Florida. In Florida, we can have the same tree, no different. So assuming all things are the same and we're going to have dirt or sand, as the case may be. But we have a complication. Our complication is the water table. The water table is not so prevalent in most of the rest of the country, but our water table will come up, especially during high rain periods, hurricane times, and can actually come up to the top level of the soil or pretty close to it, where we can get down to inches or if not 2ft of soil. And so there's not a whole lot of room because the roots, generally speaking, don't like to go down into the water. So the water table is moving up and down. The roots don't have much of a choice. They have to go out. And so that's what they do. So in Florida, you will find many of the trees will have a root system which will extend beyond the roof, the leaf canopy, and it won't extend down as far as it usually would, assuming, all things being equal, assuming it's the same tree that you would find in another part of the state or another part of the. Of another state itself. And so because of this, the roots are now moving out. And high density planning, I think you're gonna be able to see, is going to make an impact because these trees, even though they may not be running into one another, the roots are at 82 per acre. The roots are now going to be intermingling with one another and they're going to be competing with one another for nutrients. And these roots are going to be in some kind of trouble. So because they're in some kind of trouble, we're now going to have a weakening of the root system due to high density planning, which started in 1957. To make matters worse, we actually had a freeze in 1957 which didn't help. And let's take a look at that freeze in particular. So from 1940, I had mentioned that pesticide use began on a massive scale. Then high density planning started in 57. So we're doing what we can in order to help destroy the citrus industry. And then a freeze comes along. Are the plants being stressed? Well, let's take a look. Here's our freeze in 1957. Do we get the recovery? Kinda sorta. But you can see just by this right now, in these three, if not four years right now, that the time period after this freeze was not great. In other words, the trees are not recovering in the same way that There were before. They would prefer to recover. A healthy tree will recover and it will start putting out a lot of oranges. But we're not finding that recovery now after the 1957 freeze. Why? Because the plants are being compromised due to pesticides. And this has been going on now for 17 years or so. The high density planning is making things complicated too. And the recovery is not going well for these citrus trees. Another freeze comes in at this point, relatively quick succession. So we've got citrus, it's starting to recover at this point in 1961 and 1962. Then we get a freeze. Look at the drop. This is not to be surprised at. Remember I told you every time we get a freeze, we get a drop in the number of boxes. But notice what happens the year after the freeze. We don't get a recovery. So for the first time, we had a major drop after the 1962 freeze. And then, and only then did we get a recovery. So instead of recovering within one year, now the citrus trees are taking maybe three, if not two years in order to start recovering. So we now have evidence that the citrus trees are being compromised. Part of the evidence came from the insects, but now we've got these other conditions which are further making things worse for the citrus tree. And as things continue to get worse for the citrus tree, insects are going to start taking advantage of this. So this is now 1962 to 1963. Now I would like to introduce you to our next insect. The citrus root weevil, Diaprepies abbreviate, first made its appearance in Florida in 1964. All of you should realize that this is not a coincidence. This happened soon after high density planting was begun. There's a picture of the citrus root weevil crawling on someone's hand right now. This is the adult weevil. It's crucilionid. And so these weevils are gnawing at the roots of the citrus plant. Why are they going after the roots? Because those are the first things to weaken. So once high density planting came in, the first thing to be compromised was the roots. And so the insects came in and started feeding upon these weakened roots. Well, what was the response? The response from the University of Florida was threefold. One, they had also noticed that the roots were being compromised. And so Phytophthora, which is a fungus, was starting to infect the roots. Why was it doing that? Because the trees are weakened and they're not able to fight it off anymore. So Phytophthora moved in and University of Florida suggested that we need to spray a fungicide in order to control this fungus. In addition, the citrus root weevil was doing its damage too. So they suggested that we take a foliar insecticide in order to suppress the adult population, which is going to be above the ground. And we're going to make some soil applications of chemical insecticides for the control of the neonate larvae, which are the. The newborn larvae, because they're the ones that are actually gnawing on it. So even though pesticide use had begun on a massive scale, once the citrus root weevil arrived, we moved up the ladder as far as pesticides were concerned. And we added very quickly two additional insecticides and a fungicide in short order upon the citrus plant, upon the citrus tree. And so the stress levels are now, I think you can see, increasing among citrus. So we've got the freezes which are doing its own. We can see that things are being compromised. And now we get yet another freeze. But what happens during this freeze? This freeze happened to occur in 1977-1978 season. And as you can see, for the second time in a row, we did not recover the following year. Now, you can see that we did recover on the second year, just like we recovered the second year. But instead of the recovery happening within one year year, as it did from 1910 and 1940, we are now getting the citrus trees being unable to recover as they wish they would, I'm sure. And so we have a drop in citrus production the following year. Going to show you how these citrus trees are unable to cope with all these stresses as we continue to take them out in our own special way. And then something terrible happened. The 1980s came in. So I can almost feel the groans of all the citrus farmers who are on the line right now. So there wasn't much that could be done about the 1980s. It is what it is. It happened. I included that last 1979 and 1980 figure right there. And you can see we're over 200 million boxes right now. The citrus industry is doing fairly well. And then we can see we're in trouble. Why are we in trouble? Because, as luck would have it, as God ordained, we had four freezes, and we had four freezes within 10 years. So within one decade, we had four freezes. So what happens during a freeze? Let's review. So here's our production. We get a freeze, it goes down. It's natural. Do we get a recovery? No. Once again, we're still not getting a recovery. Do we get a recovery? After the second year, kind of sorta, but not really. We're still not at that point that we were up here. And so we can see that things are further compromised. Now remember, I don't have this up here, but we've still got high density planning occurring. That hasn't changed. The pesticide use hasn't changed. Dia Prepis abbreviatus is still gnawing on the roots. That hasn't changed too. But we can see the effects upon the trees that they are being compromised and recovery is not happening. And even though the recovery is slow, unfortunately we did get hit with two back to back freezes which of course caused a reduction in the number of boxes produced as I've really tried to hit home again. And so because it happened two years in a row, we're obviously being shot down from 210 million boxes down to just about 105 million boxes. So we're about half of what we were before in the citrus industry is flailing at this point. Fortunately we did get a four year reprieve and things started to improve only slightly. And then as you would know it, we got a fourth freeze which again caused a reduction in the number of boxes in the 1989-1990 season. And so this was a tough decade. A lot of citrus farmers went out of business during this time. It is the first decade in the history of citrus up until that point where we actually had a decrease in the number of boxes that were produced. It was the first decade to date. So it was a tough time. But was it really that bad? These successive freezes in the 80s led to the 1989 freeze. The one way over here, which although catastrophic, and it was catastrophic, only 6% of the trees died. Why? I mean we just got hit with four freezes and we've been going through pesticides, we're going through high density planning. We've got the four freezes I just mentioned about and we lost 6% of the trees. This should, I really want to hit this home should. To show you how good trees are at being able to handle adverse conditions. It doesn't matter whether the tree is putting out nuts or anything else. Is that trees are tough. They go on for many, many, many decades. This is not like a plant that you grow in 90 days. And so they are tough and they will do what they can in order to fight the conditions that are coming at them. So we lost 6% of the tree. We didn't lose 90 to 100%. I understand a lot of farmers went out of business. And I'm not downplaying that, but I'm just pointing out the fact that 94% of the trees did not die at this point, even though we had lost a lot during this time, and that the trees were still fighting. So now we move into the 1990s. We had a warm spell in the 1990s which did level off, but during the 1990s we had some slightly warmer temperatures. I included that 1989-1993's here. So you can see where we're at at just over 100 million boxes. And we can see, generally speaking, in the 1990s that we have a general growth in the citrus industry. So everything is looking good. I think everybody was looking at this thinking, all right, we got through the 80s, things are looking better right now. We're on our way up, and the citrus industry is recovering. And I am telling you that it was not recovering. The only reason it looks like it was recovering is because the high density planning jumped up to about 115trees. So there was a brief stint at 100trees per acre back in the late 80s, but now almost everybody was going up to 115, give or take trees per acre. And you and I showed you how the stress began at 82, we're now to 115. So I know that there's continued stress on these citrus trees. So even though we've increased the density and the oranges might be producing a little bit more because we've got a lot more acres or we may have more trees being produced, I know that the trees are being stressed. And part of the reason why I know that is because these trees now at 115 per acre, their roots at first were intermingling with one another. That was bad enough, and diet preppies let us know that the roots were in trouble. Now the leaf canopy was intermingling. So we were getting intermingling of the roof canopy of the leaf canopy of the citrus trees. And so being opportunistic, the next insect moved in. The citrus leaf miner, Philognistus citrella was first detected in Florida in 1993. It perfectly coincided with the high density planting of 115. The leaves started to show stress. Not only were they showing stress, but understand that the stress underneath the ground from the roots was already starting to take its toll upon the leaves as well. And so what happens when you get a weak leaf and you get insects eating those weak leaves? So the citrus leaf miner moved in. It's a very small insect. It's Actually on the inside of the leaf and you can see some of its mining going on right there. It did appear in 1993. I just wanted to make a quick comment that it didn't get in California until 2000. Generally speaking, California is doing better than us in several respects. So you can see the seven year delay because it took California a little bit longer to follow in our suit. And then we move on to 2000 to 2020. So what I have here is, even though this is 2000 to 2020, I did want to include just the final few years of the 1990s here for effect. So you can see where we were during that time period. And then going into 2000, what exactly happened with the citrus industry? So at this point, things were doing. I mean, on paper, we were pushing 200 to 250 million boxes of citrus. Everything seemed to be okay, I can tell you. It wasn't. Stress was there. And this is in part because they, the farmers maybe thought that, you know, this is a way to make more money. So let's go up to 150trees per acre. So this is causing additional stress upon the plant, the citrus tree. This began in 1998. This new level of high density planting began. So the roots are intermingling with one another, the leaves are intermingling with one another. We're starting to get a mess occurring in 1998. And therefore the citrus industry is continuing to suffer terribly due to decisions that are being made. And this brings in our next insect. At this point, the citrus industry had weakened itself to the point where the chewers were not as interested and we had now moved into a sucker. So the Asian citrus psyllid, which sucks nutrients from a leaf, was first detected in Florida in 1998. Some of you may be aware, it spreads citrus greening, which affects the trees. The trees, not being healthy enough to fight it off, are succumbing to citrus greening. They're very, very attractive to the Asian citrus psyllid, because the Asian citrus psyllid is only attracted to trees that are at a particular unhealthy level. And we finally reached it in 1998. This insect has been around for a long time, but then it started attacking citrus. And this resulted in another bad thing. This resulted in a dramatic increase of the use of insecticides. So we had the big jump that I talked about with diet Prepes abbreviatus, the root weevil. And now we have another round beginning with the Asian citrus psyllid. And the insecticides have been coming out of the woodworks in order to take care of this pest, which although is not found in necessarily high numbers, the fact that it spreads citrus greening is becoming a bit problematic to the citrus industry. And the citrus industry, there's really not much it is doing in order to take care of this situation. So it is choosing to increase the use of insecticides. And that's what's going on, which is further causing the trees to become further compromised than even they were before. And so the high density planning was there at 150. And then in 2009 and 2010 we got, we got a couple freezes. Again, not great. You know, I can't say anybody was happy about this, but we were already in trouble already. Things were becoming compromised in the citrus industry already. We then went into a freeze. I looked for the usual recovery. I didn't get it. If you would say, well, Tom, I mean, there's a recovery right there. I suppose if you want to consider that one year of recovery. I'm not sure if I would because it jumped up and almost hit 150. But at this point the citrus industry was in such bad shape it could not recover. And recovery has not happened in the citrus industry to date. I have the 2019-2020 figures up there and that is what is going on today. I don't have the 2021 figures, so I just got the most recent ones that I could. But we have another problem here. As you can see, we dipped below 50 million boxes for the first time since 1946. So since 1946 we've been above 50 million boxes. We were pushing 250 million before. Just a few years ago, we dipped below 50 million. And so at this point, the citrus industry was about the same as it was in 1946. As far as production, if I may say so, I consider that pathetic. But that's where we are today. And this is why, in part, we're having so much difficulty. So if you've heard bad things about the citrus industry, I think visually you can understand and see why this is happening right now. Some of you were looking at this graph, might be saying, well, please move the pointer over here, Tom. I mean, clearly you can see that the citrus industry is starting to recover. So we've got two years in a row where we broke 50 million boxes. So I understand we were a little low, but it looks like we're starting to recover. So, you know, get off your high horse and just relax, Tom. Everything's going to be just fine. I happen to know something that Most of you don't, and that things are not fine. Currently we are at high density planting of 200 trees per acre. It is very common to go into a citrus grove here in Florida and find 200, 220, 250 trees per acre. This is now what's happening. This is causing a slight increase because so many trees are being planted, but the trees are continually being stressed. The stress right now is at the point where you can see recovery is certainly not going to happen. And it's actually even worse than I'm portraying here because there is active talk going on the industry, especially over the past 10 years, about upping this to 300 to 400 trees per acre. Indeed, there is a farmer down in 2018, he planted 900 trees per acre. I think the figure was 908. I can tell you that is a disaster waiting to happen. There is a zero percent chance that if you are planting 200 trees per acre, zero percent chance that you are going to have longevity in your citrus trees. These trees are not going to survive the usual 50 to 70 years. They will not be producing the oranges that you want them to do. And so the whole industry is collapsing under the weight of all of the bad decisions that are being made. And these are not just bad decisions that can be noticed via the freezes, but also based upon the pesticides. But as I pointed out, we've now got insects right now that are telling me, as I'm looking at them, that the citrus industry is starting to go downhill because we're not dealing with much orange dogs anymore. We're dealing now with the Asian citrus psyllid. And even worse, because now there were 200 trees per acre, things have gotten a little bit worse. This is now what we call a citrus grove. These trees are very close together. They're going to run into the roots by this point, are essentially running into one another. The leaf canopies will be on top of one another very, very soon. I also happen to know that in the citrus industry here we are spraying imidacloprid, an insecticide, through the drip system every six weeks for the first four years of the tree's life. So the tree isn't even allowed in order to grow the way that it wants to. It is now getting pesticides during the first four years of its life every six weeks. In the case of imidacloprid, which is being done because it's this a systemic insecticide that is being used in order to take care of the Asian citrus psyllid, which Many people perceive to be the problem. It's not the problem. It happens to be manifesting the problem. And that's what's going on with the citrus industry right now. So this is what it looks like right now. So for those of you who maybe are old enough to remember some beautiful citrus groves many, many decades ago, this is what we're dealing with now. We are now dealing with hedges. Hedges. Sorry about that. I just had some technical difficulties. Right now. These hedges are now the norm. And because of that, because this is now the norm, we are now dealing with a bunch of hedges that are being grown. The trees are now no longer able to grow to full capacity. They are now turned into hedges, and they are further being compromised as we speak. So in case you're wondering and you want to go visit a Florida grove, I'm showing you a picture right now. This is now what you're going to see. And it does get worse. So in order to protect them against the Asian citrus psyllid, some have advocated taking nets and actually covering the rows or the trees. And it doesn't matter whether it's a larger tree, such as we have up here, or whether we have new plantings of citrus, they'll cover them with the screens. And when they cover them with the screens, the idea is to prevent the Asian citrus psyllid from attacking, which actually does a pretty good job because it can't get through. But the tree is being compromised. Its health is dropping drastically. And that is in part because the screens are doing a pretty good job of keeping out not only some of the visible light, but some of the ultraviolet light. Not a lot, but a little bit. And that'll be just enough in order to compromise the tree, because, as I mentioned in my last presentation, once you reduce visible light and ultraviolet light, trees will become compromised, and they will start inviting other pests to come in because they will have very specific deficiencies in their systems. And so these screens have now invited a brand new pest. The brand new pest is nipeococcus viridis. It was introduced in Florida 2009. It's known as either the Lebbeck mealybug or the spherical mealybug. And this is being found in large numbers underneath the netting on the citrus trees that are being covered. So the Asian citrus psyllid has taken a back seat. And those that are being netted, other insects are now moving in because the trees are weakened to the next level. And we're now dealing with yet another pest which has just become a little bit more of a problem in the past year or two than before. And I anticipate that we're going to see more of this as time goes on. So just to review real quick, here's my graph again. The grasshoppers are the first ones to attack. And yes, the grasshoppers will attack citrus. I have witnessed acridids and tetageniids, grasshoppers all, both of them attacking citrus. They don't stay for long because they need to. I have a relatively unhealthy tree, but if it's relatively unhealthy, they will attack it pretty badly. But if not, they'll just move on. And then if the tree falls, the chewing insects will move in. That's when we had the orange dog. And then after the orange dog, which is an outside feeder, we had the citrus leaf miner, which is an inside feeder. Both of them are chewing insects, though. Both the orange dog and the citrus leaf miner are chewing insects. And so that's the next group. Then we moved on to the Asian citrus psyllid after the trees had become unhealthy enough to the point where the citrus leaf miner is not as interested and it's not, it's not causing us anywhere near as much damage as it was in the 90s. The Asian citrus psyllid was next. And now we've now moved into the aphid group, but only when we cover them with the, the netting. So the aphid group, just a reminder, includes the scales, the mealybugs and the phylloxerins. And we've moved to that point. I have had a chance to measure many of the citrus trees in Florida. And I would say that 95% of the citrus trees are at 7 and below as far as their brix levels are concerned. So I'm not the least bit surprised that I'm seeing what, I'm seeing. What I get excited about if grasshoppers start attacking citrus trees. And I'll think, okay, we're headed in the right direction and that's where we need to go. But right now I haven't seen a lot of them. I don't think most people have seen a lot of grasshoppers attacking citrus. And the same thing with the orange dogs. The orange dogs are not attacking at the same level that they were before simply because the trees are too unhealthy. So let's review a couple points. The importance of sunlight and the production of high yields of good quality citrus fruit cannot be overstressed. And that was from 1978. We knew this back in 1978, citrus is a full sun plant. It needs full sun. You can't cover it up. It doesn't want to be overlapping its branches because it wants its leaves exposed. It doesn't want screen over it. It wants full sun and a screen is not going to cut it. And so that's what was known. That was the knowledge back in 1978 through IFAS, which is the Institute of Food and agricultural sciences at UF. The higher density planning, which began at 82 and 115, 150 to 200, it pushes the trees to produce quickly. And the first 10 years, sometimes five years, you can see increased yields from this, which causes many of the farmers in order to think, wow, this is a good thing, let's go ahead and move in this direction, not realizing the problem, because beyond that time, the trees start growing into one another and their longevity or health was reduced and is reduced because the trees are not going to live as long as they did and they're not going to produce as much as they used to. How much did they used to? Well, citrus trees can easily live for 50 to 70 years as long as we don't do anything to mess them up. They begin to produce crop by the third to the fifth year. It depends. The citrus crop produces crop every year of its long life. So it's one of those gifts that keeps on giving. Now, today, the growers are hoping to get 10 years out of a tree. That is another pathetic example. So we've got a plant, a tree that wishes it could grow 50 to 70 years, let's say 60 years as a midpoint. And now farmers are crossing their fingers to get 10 years out of a tree, and then they have to go in there and completely replace everything at great cost to them in order to attempt to get another 10 years out of a citrus tree. Since the tree will not grow to adulthood, the trees are planted closer together. Thus we have the high density planting. The high density planting does prevent exposure to full sun, as you saw, especially during the hedges, in addition to the screening. And that furthermore, intermingling of these branches compromises the healthy growth as it reduces the canopy. Because all citrus trees would prefer that every single leaf is exposed to the sun, if that were possible. That's their goal. A mature orange tree, for your information, produces 1200 oranges. Now, citrus becomes fully mature at about 35 years. Hence, the tree that lives for 60 years can likely produce 1200 oranges every season, every year for about the final 25 years of its life. That is a lot of money. And that's another reason why the citrus industry did so well for so long. It was one of those gifts that keeps on giving. The trees could last. Some could go even beyond 70 years. But that's just a lot of oranges. Today. Trees are not making it to maturity anymore, as I said. And the average on a given citrus tree in Florida is about 300 oranges per tree. Trees just don't get anywhere near 1200 anymore. 300 is about it. And I think we may be going down to 250, if not 200 in the short term if we continue doing what we are doing. So that is pretty much it. I want to thank you for listening to the citrus presentation. I hope that you were able to understand a little bit more not only about the citrus industry, but I also wanted you to. To be able to possibly apply this to your own crop if you're not raising citrus yourself. So thank you for taking time out of your day as well to listen to me banter for another time period. If you haven't listened to the first talk, you might want to do that if there were some parts of this that were not clear to you. For those of you who did see the first talk and then the second one, things should starting to be fit together. The pieces of the puzzle should start to come together. Hopefully so. And if not, hopefully the questions will be able to help bring some. Some final points together. So at this point, I want to thank you all for listening. And I am now ever so briefly, going to hand this over to John.

I find that this, this conversation. Tom, you connect lots of dots. You talk about the increase in sector set applications and fungicide applications and so forth. But there's another aspect to the whole story of citrus in Florida as well, which, and I'm not sure of the exact timing, but my understanding is that prior to, let's say, approximately 1950 or 1960, citrus trees used to be grown in the soil would be completely covered with a cover crop or a crop of weeds. And the common fertilization practice was to apply compost or some type of organic material for fertilizer. And that all changed all of a sudden. We started using herbicides to keep the soil completely bare and fertilizers changed to chemical or mineral fertilizers. And we started consuming all of the little organic matter that wasn't the sandy soil profile to begin with. And now we have this, which is bare exposed soil exposed to the Florida sun and rain.

Excellent point. I did not cover that. Simply Due to time. But since you brought it up, you are correct. In the past, what has been done. And as a matter of fact, there are even other pictures too. When you take a look like the hedge picture, you can see that there's no vegetation in between any of it. There we go. So it's the last one. So there's a lot of herbicide that's being spread upon these trees and they're all being compromised by that. You are correct. The organic matter is going down, it's not going up. And that is the last place we in Florida need to go. Our organic matter needs to go up because it is so pathetically low. When we start spraying these pesticides, the organic matter now drops to a lower level. We have even less microbes than we did before and the trees become much more compromised. So yes, if you have, even if it's not a cover crop per se, if you simply cut it, if you simply cut the lawn, what will happen depending upon how frequently you cut it, is the only thing that's going to grow. Assuming you keep cutting it. The only thing that's going to grow in Florida is going to be grasses. Everything else is not going to survive if you keep cutting it. So everybody in Florida knows this because you go out, you cut your lawn every week or two and the only thing that really survives is mostly grass, if not some low lying broadleaf weeds. And so because of this you can actually have grass working to your advantage. Because many of the grasses have the capabilities of fixing nitrogen due to free living bacteria, free living in the soil. Not the legumes that we all know about with the nitrogen nodules, but the free living nitrogen fixing bacteria in the soil. And so we're getting rid of those because the grass is gone. So because we don't have the grass, nitrogen is not being produced. And this has now become very common for people to put on their crops. And it's not just citrus, but citrus, you know, has these fancy formulas that says that you need this much nitrogen in order to feed your citrus plant. And to a certain extent that is true. But it was happened to be supplied before by the grasses, the COVID crops and things that were underneath that were helping to fix that nitrogen, which then passed down to the citrus trees roots because they were a little bit deeper and then benefited them. So that is a great point that you bring up and I just wanted to further elaborate upon that just to hit home how correct you actually are.

In the meantime, there's a couple of questions here that I can respond to. Already there's a question here from Nigel Palmer. Hi, Nigel, glad to see you here. The question is, is there a BRIX scale for fungal and or bacterial pathogen types that is similar to the BRIX scale you show for insect types? I'm going to also ask Tom this question when he comes back to my. Oh, I'm not aware that there is one. And I would suggest if you're interested in digging into that, looking at Olivier Husson's work, which actually you might know of Nigel, but the most recent paper that he and a team of colleagues published, I posted on the blog a couple of weeks or a couple of months ago, and he clearly describes the different zones of plant health or disease based on redox profiles, EH and ph profiles. So from what I can tell and what I've observed so far, that is actually quite a bit more accurate than looking at BRIX readings because it gives you better parameters of what direction you need to move in. Hey, Tom, welcome back. There's a question here I'd love for you to respond to as well, which is, is there a BRIX scale similar for bacteria and fungi, similar to the one that you showed for insects, that shows susceptibility to different classes or different groups of organisms at different levels of BRIX readings?

Am I aware. No, I'm not aware of anybody who has done a chart for brix. I think I'm the first one to have done something like this. And obviously because of my background I would choose insects. But it's something I'm sure that could be done if there was a microbiologist out there who wanted to play around, that they'll be able to do the same thing. But unfortunately I don't have hard figures to give. I do know, I think, like everybody probably knows that obviously the unhealthier the plant gets, the more likely it is to get disease. But I could not tell you with any degree of certainty what BRIX levels are better for for what, as far as fungi or various other microbes. So I'm just not aware of anything that's out there. My goal for doing the insect one during the last presentation was because I realized that everyone was talking about 12 Brix and that was it. And I thought there's got to be something more to it than that. And that's why I decided to elaborate upon that with the insects.

Tom, there's a question here from John. We leave our ground bare because that will give us the highest temperature in a frost event. Would the health benefit of a cover crop or even perhaps Microbial heat outweigh the downsides of reduced radiant heating from the soil.

Yeah, what's happening with the freezing is, yes, you will get heating more if you have brown soil, but you also don't have your insulative layer. So you took on one problem and caused another, relieved yourself of one problem, but created another. So by leaving it bare, you have no, let's call it a carpeting on the soil, which means it is no longer able to regulate itself in the same way. And when you have the heat of the sun hitting your bare ground, the temperature, as many of us are well aware, the temperature, I mean, really just goes through the roof. And all of this seems good. What is not mentioned is that the temperature of the ground drops drastically once the sun goes down. That heat, because there's no carpet, escapes into the air very, very quickly. And by the time, you know, you're looking at nine, you know, 10 o' clock at night, there is, there's really no heat left. And the citrus trees, when they succumb to these freezes, are doing so at about 2, 3, 4 o', clock, 5 o' clock in the morning when it's coldest. And that is the most serious time. And there is no heat coming up at that point. You would do better in order to keep a carpet over the bottom during the time when you need it, which is going to be at 2, 3, 4 in the morning when many of the citrus trees will succumb due to the frost.

Thank you, Tom, that was a great question. What happens to the sugar that's retained in the plant overnight if sugar brix shows less than eight during the night? Will insects attack in the night?

They would if they do. But some insects don't attack at night, but some do. So yes, if it fell, it would. But the trees are pretty smart and they're going to be able to keep the levels up. And they realize when the insects are going to attack and when they're not. Most of the insects are going to attack during the day. The root insects are not dealing with that. They're going to be feeding 24 hours because they're underneath the ground. But no, no, no, no. If you've got that type of situation going on, you're going to have. The insects are going to be moving in and yes, they can. If the brix goes that low, it shouldn't. If the plant is unhealthy and the brix goes down too low, which it can at night and it becomes susceptible, then that's the problem of the plant it's not the problem of nighttime.

Yeah. And I think the, our observation, our experience has been that you need to. A healthy plant will have fluctuation from the day to the night. Needs to have fluctuation.

Oh yeah, it's got to send it down to the roots. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Question here from Darren. Does an organically listed pesticide like Pyganic, which is derived from chrysanthemums, also impact tree health negatively due to microbial impacts? How about using oils etc, such as for suffocants?

Oils for suffocants are pretty good for killing a lot of those sucking insects that I refer to. But when you are dealing with the sucking insects, your tree is pretty compromised already. So you're going to need help. So if you're spraying the oils but you're not putting nutrition down, I would say you're fighting a losing battle and this is going to get expensive over time with your oils or other things that you're trying to do. So nutrition needs to get into the plant and then the plant becomes more resistant. What was the second question? Sorry, I think there was two.

The, the other question was this is a question about impacts on soil biology of organic insecticides like Pyrethrum.

Yeah, Pyrethrum is not going to have the same effect as some of the synthetic pesticides. However, there's no indication that it's going to help it. Pyrethrum, which is simply crushed chrysanthemum flowers in its pure form is a plant. It's the reproductive part of the chrysanthemum and as such it doesn't have a serious effect, but it does have some. So the only reason you'd be spreading that is because you have an insect problem. And so if you had an insect problem, I wouldn't worry about putting down Pyrethrim, I would be worried about getting the nutrition up in order to do so. So if you choose to put Pyrethrum down, I mean it's certainly not going to be as bad because this is a very, this is a natural substance. The synthetic pyrethroids stem from pyrethrum. I think I mentioned that briefly at the beginning of the presentation. So they are related to one another and that's the reason why the beginning of the title Pyr, Pyrethrum. Pyrethroids are listed as such. But no, I wouldn't. I mean if you feel you have to do so then it's not as bad. But if you're neglecting your nutrition, then once again you're Walking uphill and you're going to be making a lot of work upon yourself as well as the bottom line.

Speaking of managing nutrition, there's a couple of questions here about nutrition management. The first is from Osvaldo in Brazil. Is it possible to manage the silver cilidio? I think that's the leaf miner, perhaps.

Is he talking about the psyllid?

Yes, it might be.

It might be the psyllid.

Is it possible to manage the psyllid in dry weather during the winter? Only by managing nutrition. Ah.

Oh my goodness. That is a great question. See, there are so many complicating caveats. Yeah, this is going to be. Give me just a second. Citrus greening is a plug disease, okay? Because it's a plug disease, it has a tendency to plug things up, phloem tissue, for example. And when that plug occurs, nutrition can't get in and out of a given branch, assuming that the plug extends to a particular branch. So in the case of citrus greening, that plug will kill the branch and the branch will die. The rest of the tree can live, but that one will die. And so that's kind of like the beginning of the end as it kills one by one. This plug disease is actually, there are many plug diseases that are out there. This, this plug disease happens to be a carbohydrate. And because it's a carbohydrate, it is susceptible to water. Imagine if you would, taking a piece of bread and placing it into water. What happens to it? Yes, it gets soggy and in a very short period of time it just completely crumbles and disintegrates into nothing. And that's the way it is with these plug diseases is that when you have a lot of water, they get cleaned out. So we have noticed down here in the Florida citrus industry is that we were having some difficulties with drought. We had a seven year drought that began and that actually complicated things. I didn't talk about that because that, just like I said, it just makes things more complicated. But because these questions are coming up, I'll talk about it now. Which also added to the problems of the Asian citrus psyllid. It was weakening the trees. They weren't getting quite enough water and they came in and started feeding. Citrus greening took hold and it wasn't being cleaned out as soon as the rain came in. After the seven year drought, recovery from citrus greening was immediate. I got a chance to talk to a grower one time and he just could not believe how his trees improved once the rain came. In. And so that's the reason why. So that partly answers your question. And yet, yes, if you. If you can overload the system, you can actually clean out the plug. But if you have a lack of water, whether it be rainwater, for example, these plugs, carbohydrate plugs, become more prevalent. They do not get cleaned out, and therefore the plug subsists and the tree suffers as a result of it. Wow, that was a good question.

And to chime in on what you just shared, Tom, our experience has been that if you catch it early enough that you can actually reverse the plugs, you can reverse the bacterial infections in the vascular tissue with trace mineral nutrition management and good nutrition management. We've observed it. It's happened on a number of occasions. So it's absolutely possible to accomplish that.

Absolutely true. Absolutely true.

And the next step is managing nutrition, obviously, so that you don't have susceptibility to the psyllid, which is also not all that difficult.

Correct. The. I get in a lot of trouble when I say this, so I'm gonna go ahead and say it and as much trouble as I can right now. Citrus greening is an infinitely curable disease. It is easy to cure as long as you're getting, for example, the water in there, they're getting enough rain and you're putting nutrition management down. Citrus greening will not take hold of a tree. We happen to be riding around a citrus grove one time, and I looked and I saw this beautiful tree. And I thought, whoa, you know, stop the truck. This is awesome. So we got out, we looked at the tree. It looked fantastic. There was no Asian citrus psyllid on it. We couldn't know. We didn't notice any citrus greening on it. We had no evidence for Dia prepis, even though that's a root weevil. We had no evidence for that above or below the ground. We didn't have any evidence of citrus leaf miner. We checked out as many leaves as we could. It looked fantastic. So, of course, it had to be tested. The brix on the leaves was 15.9. And you know what? I wasn't surprised. So to have a 15.9 brix tree which was absolutely resistant to everything that we've just talked about, goes back with my original thesis saying that if it's a healthy tree, it's not going to be attacked by insects and it will not get disease. Even though I'm not a disease expert, we could see that citrus greening had not taken hold of this tree. And so this was a Very, very impressive tree, despite the fact that most of them are not.

It's worth asking the question, if this was one tree in a grove surrounded by many others, what was the anomaly? What allowed that tree to be that healthy?

It was at the end of the row. It was at the end of the row. And so it was getting full sun on. Probably about 2/3 of it was getting full sun because there was another tree on the other side. In addition, we were in a windrow. So when they were coming through and spraying, unfortunately they were spraying pesticides. The wind just picked it up and took it away. So the tree wasn't getting a healthy dose of pesticides like the trees inside the rows were. So that was another thing that was compromising the, the situation. And so the tree wasn't getting the pesticides. It had the full sun, it registered 15.9, whereas the other trees in the row were at 7 and below. So that was the anomaly. Good question, John. I figured once I mentioned this, I thought, John is going to want to know what happened.

Of course you always want to know why.

Why?

The question that two year olds ask, why. So there's a couple of questions here from Ian Thomas. And Ian, I'm not quite clear on your second question, so if you can resend that through, that would be valuable. The first question is, Ian's first question is on citrus gall wasp. Where do they fit on the spectrum or on the Brix scale and how can they be managed?

The citrus gall wasp is a chewer, so they belong to the order Hymenoptera and in the larval stage they are chewing insects and so they are attacking the tree and creating the galls. And so that is what you're referring to. So they are at a higher level than they would be if they were a sucking insect, such as the psyllid that we were just talking about. So how do you get rid of them? I think we've kind of mentioned already and that is increasing nutrition. So we need to increase the nutrition, we need to get nutritional inputs, we need to stop using the pesticides and killing the microbes, especially, especially in Florida. Wow. We are really low on organic matter. I'm so jealous when I hear about you. Other states about how much organic matter you have. So we have so little already. And to be spraying pesticides out there just compromises even worse. So if you can stop, stop cold turkey, if you can do so, get the nutrition onto the plant, the gall wasps will disappear. You may get some grasshoppers in there, you know, Sorry, that's just the way it works. And once you get a plant that's healthy enough that even the grasshoppers, the crickets and the katydids don't attack it, only then will you get vertebrates that are attacking it. So the vertebrates will move in. So, you know, we've got deer crows down here in Florida are very prevalent and so they will attack plants that are very healthy because that's what they do. And so we'll have to, if we get to that point, and I don't think we're anywhere near that point right now, we'll have to start putting scarecrows up again right now. Scarecrows are a thing of the past. The reason why is we don't need them because they scare away vertebrates. And the vertebrates aren't, are really not interested in a lot of the crops that we're growing right now, sadly.

Thanks, Tom. There's a follow up question here from John. You've discussed poor tree health, making a tree susceptible to Asian species, psyllids. Are there nutritional or perhaps cultural practices that will protect a tree from HLB bacteria itself rather than just its vector? And I'm happy to chime in here a little bit. There's, there's. Obviously you have to take a full integrated approach to managing nutrition, but in particular you need to ensure that you have abundant levels of molybdenum and boron and calcium. Those three are particularly important. And obviously everything is important, but those three seem to have a very direct and immediate relieving impact on hlb. And it's also worth mentioning that this bacteria tends to really proliferate in the vascular tissue in the presence of abundant levels of ammonium. So all the pieces about nitrogen management and keeping ammonium levels reduced or at zero are very relevant here. Is there anything you'd like to add to that, Tom?

Oh my goodness, I don't want to add anything to that. Had a conversation with John earlier on. I told him, I said, how can I get to be as good at you in agricultural consulting? And he looked at me very seriously and he said, grow a beard, we'll talk. So at first people might think, you know, that's really rude of him to say something like that. But I remember thinking like, so it's the beard, is it? So absolutely you want to chime in. I'm not going to add anything to that because that is a beautiful gem and it should remain untouched.

Tom, having a beard gives you the ability to go, hmm.

We just have to scratch our heads.

Yeah, There's a question here from David. What affects have hurricanes played in the overall timeline?

Hurricanes are not as much of a problem as you would think, even though they are. And the reason why is because if you take a look at citrus, most of it is grown inland. And hurricanes do not affect as seriously inland plants as they do those on the coast. So quick lesson for those of you in the other 49 states, because you see those awful pictures of Florida hurricanes, and they're all absolutely horrible, but about 100% of those pictures and videos are on the coast. And so you see the waves crashing in and you see the trees bending, and that is what you see when you see Florida. But that's only on the coast. Inland, we don't get those type of winds. As a matter of fact, usually a hurricane will fall two category levels by the time it hits inland, and so it's not as serious a problem. So if we got hit with a Category 5, by the time it got inland, it'd be down to a three. But we usually don't get hit by a five. Sometimes we get hit by a two. By the time it gets inland, it's not even a hurricane anymore. And so the effect upon our plants is not as serious as you may think. Having said that, when a hurricane does move in, the plant recognizes it and shunts almost all of its sugar down into the roots because it anticipates that it's going to lose everything on top. And they are very quick about that. I have not measured it, but I have to say I think they could do it within a couple hours. That's about how fast they are. So when I have noticed very strong storms coming in, the plants preceding it are able to detect it and send the sugar down to the roots within an hour or two, so that if they lose everything on top, they can actually grow back and do so. So I will. I won't tell you that the hurricanes don't have any effect. I do need you to realize that it doesn't have as serious an effect as you probably think, because citrus is generally not grown on the coast. But having said that, too sure, we can lose plants. We certainly lose leaves. If we've got a strong wind, a lot of the plants can lose their leaves, but they will if they can recover and grow back as I, as I alluded to in the presentation, these perennials, these trees, will fight very hard in order to get their plant back to where it's supposed to be. So whether it's a freeze or a hurricane or anything else that we throw at it. They're very resilient and as long as we don't compromise them, they will do just fine.

Thanks, Tom. We've got one last question here, comment from Damon which says. Thank you, Tom. A very enlightening talk. Last presentation, I asked a question regarding pests that come around during fruit fill but are not present during vegetation, and I'm assuming he means vegetative growth. Your answer was that my brix level was around 12. But during flower, brix is. But during flower the brix is dropping due to the stress of fruit fill. What I did notice is the presence of grasshoppers, which I thought was an indication that my plants are unhealthy.

It is. If grasshoppers are there, that is an indication that they are unhealthy. But it's the degree of unhealthiness that I hope that I was talking about and I hope that it was clear that it's showing you. So before my presentation, I think a lot of people had the either or situation. If insects are attacking your plants are unhealthy, and if they're not attacking it, they're healthy. And there's some, there's some truth to that. But I wanted to go further because there are a number of farmers out there who still walk their lands, who still go out and check their plants and they're observing these things and they notice things, like I told you, like, you know, you won't have 15 to 20 insects attacking a single plant at the same time. They all do this in certain sequences and this is all based upon the health. So if you have grasshoppers attacking, it's pretty common. So if you've got a healthy plant at run, let's just say it's at 12 brix. Once the fruit comes in, that will cause a stress. There will be a drop in the brix as it starts to fill out the fruit and the grasshoppers will come in and start eating some of the leaves. It's not a serious problem. That's why I tell people I would prefer, you know, the magic number be 14. I'm much more comfortable with 14 because I can tell you you will have fluctuations and it is not impossible. As a matter of fact, it's probable that you're going to have fluctuations of 2 brix either way. So if you're dealing with a 14 brix plant and it goes down and it hovers between 12 and 16, you're going to be in good shape. But if you're at 12 Brix right now, and it goes down to 10, you're going to become susceptible to some insects. And so if we can avoid that, that'd be great. And that's why my nutrition is so important, is to make sure that we can get it as high as we can. Because I do consider 14 to be the safe zone. 12 I don't consider to be the safe zone. And I used to when I first heard about the magic number of 12 because it was so magical, but it's not. I have observed grasshoppers eating 12 brix. They don't stay for very long, but they will take a few bites out of it. So I realize there's more to it than 12 brix. And so I'm much more comfortable at 14. That citrus tree we saw at 15.9, nothing was on it and nothing was eating the leaves. So that's the type of thing that I'm looking for. And so that tree should, if that's a good, healthy tree, the brix levels on the oranges should be a minimum of three above the Leaf. So if they're at 15.9, I would expect that the oranges are going to be 18.9. And I know that that's possible because I've eaten a 21.7 brix orange before. So knowing that oranges can get to be that high, I know that there are plants out there, citrus trees, that can easily hit 15 brix on the leaf in order to supply the oranges and get their brix levels up to a very tasty level.

I'm a bit envious. I would like to taste a 20 Brix orange. There's one last question here. Ian's last question. Without SAP analysis, would it be worth using Hugh levels biochemical sequence of nutrition as a strategy to address nutritional deficiencies, starting with sulfur, then moving to silicon, boron, calcium, et cetera? I would respond this way. If you are a commercial grower growing citrus, why would you chose or why would you even consider doing it without SAP analysis? And in my opinion, I don't think the biochemical sequence is going to be anywhere close to being a replacement for the SAP analysis, simply because the majority of the time the significant nutrient imbalances that are causing all kinds of problems are the trace minerals. They are manganese and copper and zinc and molybdenum and boron, most of which are not addressed until very late in the biochemical sequence. And they often need to be the starting point in our experience. So I would suggest you not guess and test if at all possible. Tom, I want to say thank you for sharing all of your information. I really enjoyed this presentation. I'm sure everyone else has as well. And to all of our listeners, we look forward to seeing you again on our future webinars. Thank you for being here.

Thank you. Bye bye, everyone.